Center for Sustainable Business | Casey Clark

Note: This interview was conducted when Casey was in his former role at Glenmede.

Could you please tell us what you do, and how sustainability intersects with your day to day responsibilities?

I am responsible for providing strategic oversight of Glenmede’s Impact Investing efforts, aligning portfolios with environmental, social, and faith-based goals and building investment strategies across both public and private markets. We work primarily with school boards, non-profit boards, and high-net-worth individuals and have a data driven, quantitative approach that focuses on catalyzing positive change without sacrificing returns.


What are the biggest challenges and opportunities that your sector faces with respect to sustainability?

The biggest challenge is around education. There are a lot of misconceptions about sustainable and impact investing. Another challenge is around measuring the positive impact that we generate for our clients, but there are rapid advancements underway in this area. Regarding opportunities, the growing amount of data available that allows us to assess risk and return ramifications of incorporating various environmental, social, and governance (ESG) values into an investment portfolio has been absolutely transformative. We are able to build portfolios that encourage positive change and quantify the risk and return ramifications unlike any other time in history. Exploring and analyzing this treasure trove of data is exciting.


What advice do you have for Stern students interested in embarking on careers related to sustainability?

It's becoming more and more important to have sustainability knowledge along with another functional skill set, such as marketing, investment analysis, or supply chain management. The field is growing rapidly and there will continue to be a greater need for people who have developed an expertise in both areas.


How do you recommend students use their time at Stern to be better prepared for a career in sustainability? Are there are any books, courses, podcasts, or other resources that you recommend one to read to understand the various themes and career options in sustainability?

For courses, I'd recommend Professor Tensie Whelan's "Sustainability for Competitive Advantage" class and Professor Steve Godeke's "Investing for Environmental & Social Impact" course. There is also a great course taught by Richard Levich and Steve Godeke called “Impact Investing Experiential Learning Seminar” where students partner with firms in the private sector to work on specific impact investing projects.

To read more about this field, check out the website we sponsor called Impactivate. We publish ten articles per month from journalists and thought leaders under our themes of planet, society, faith, and investing playbook. I encourage folks to Google Impactivate or go to impactinvestingexchange.com and sign up for the monthly newsletter, which distributes the top five most popular articles. I'd also recommend The Intentional Endowments Network newsletter and ImpactAlpha.


What is your proudest career accomplishment?

My proudest career accomplishment is helping to launch the impact investing division within my larger organization. My role in Sustainable and Impact Investing did not exist when I started at Glenmede over ten years ago. I'm very proud of creating something that wasn't there before and making a positive impact along the way.


Are there any final comments or anything else you would like to share?

There are so many great resources, people and networks at NYU. Utilize them while you're here!

Back to Alumni Profiles List